Those who were left and could still run, found their feet and raced to the ramparts. The dead and undead armies flew after them, and to Quan’s utter astonishment, half the numbers of Yaoquai and half of the Night Guards Army vanished into the brick barricade before the other halves froze, then turned in unison as though responding to a call to arms.
The black dragon addressed him. “Brigade General. I am Yinglong of the mountain. I will hold the troops I have captured inside this wall. But the Fox Queen’s army is merely decimated, not destroyed. They retreat because their queen needs them. I can hear her summons.”
“Where is Jasmine?” Quan asked. “I won’t leave until I have rendered her harmless.”
“I can’t help you if I am to hold the Hell demons and the ghost army prisoner.” He turned his head to the flicker of a golden tail. “She baits you,” he warned. “Stay, and you stay at your peril.”
Quan turned and chased the golden fox along the balustrade of the wall.
%%%
Master Yun, aboard the broad back of the blue dragon, rose up and up into the air. Fucanlong’s blueness melded into the liquid blue of the sky, and when viewed from the ground seemingly disappeared. Desperation pushed the warlock now—he had only half his Crosshairs. If he failed to strike while the Outer Circle was scattered, he may not have another chance. He looked below and saw the Fox Queen in all her splendour. She was a four-legged beast, velvet as night, with nine magnificent plumed tails, dipped in silver. She had grown tremendously in size, and circled the inner ring of her protectors. A baying came from her indigo lips, and he knew she was calling her troops home.
Now. Now before they return. “Drop me here, Fucanlong!”
The dragon dipped toward the center of the circle of fearsome, demonic armies and Master Yun clamped the Scimitar between his hands, and leaped.
One thing he knew, and that was if Dahlia were to retain her power over her armies, she must hold her fox form. In her human form, her power waned to that of a sorceress. It was the nine tails that contained the power to control the armies, and it was the nine tails that Master Yun must destroy.
“Dahlia,” he shouted, landing sturdily on his feet. “It is over. I have the Scimitar of Yongfang. Its blade will sever you of your power.”
The Fox Queen was silent. She approached him and rose on her hind legs, the fur on her chest and belly prickling, and gleaming like inky satin.
Instantly, she transformed into the radiant moon-haired, golden-eyed witch that Master Yun remembered from his days of the warring kingdoms—before First Emperor united them. The armed demons around her turned lax. “I am not afraid of you, Warlock,” she said. “No matter that your power grows with the death of your armies, you are still only one. I am many. And it is obvious you are terrified that the end is near. You cannot win when the only way you can increase your power is to have your own people killed.”
Master Yun struck at her with the Scimitar. She stepped back and laughed. “Lopping off my head will do nothing.”
Instantly, she transformed into the black fox. Instead of going for his throat, she attacked his legs, and toppled him to the ground. This move was unexpected, but Master Yun was still adept. He catapulted to his feet crippled though he was, and struck at her rump as she swung around. He made a further attempt with a two-handed swing, and was met with the lances of one thousand demon soldiers, fifty of which were speared into the ground to cage him.
%%%
In the breaking dawn, Zhu stood with Li on the parapet of the city wall, and squinted toward the battlefield, which was engulfed in an evil cloud. Black smoke and the stink of the roasting flesh of dead warriors clogged his air passages. “It’s working,” he said. “The Ba She and Bai Gu Jing are feeding on each other.”
“They are beasts after all,” Li said. “Even now, Zi Shicheng, Liao Dong and Captain Ching are cleaning up. Soon all of the monsters will be dead or they will flee.”
“Try to get some sleep now, sister, else your wound will fester. You have been fighting for a day and a night, and the gods only know what you were doing before you joined me.”
“We have all been fighting for a day and a night, and now, into another day. I can’t rest. I—” Li cut herself off so abruptly that Zhu had to look off into the battlefield to see what had stopped her words. There were still many snake-like Ba She, but they were manageable at last, as they fed upon their fellow demons, the White Bone Spirits. The latter tried everything to escape the voracious appetite of the snakes, even transforming into snakes themselves, only to find themselves in a scaly, twisting skirmish to see who could devour whom first. That was not what had Li speechless. She pulled her jaw taut, and pointed into the distance beyond the mounds of burning corpses; they had been rendered unpalatable to the flesh-eating demons. “Look beyond the smoking carcasses. Tell me what you see.”
Zhu’s eyes grew round as oranges. “Either my sight deceives me or I am going crazy.”
“Not crazy, Zhu,” Li said. “Quan warned me of such a creature. A giant. He has few brains and likely can’t be reasoned with. He might be harmless except he was seduced into the Fox Queen’s forces. He desires one thing, and one thing only. The sun.”
“Something we cannot give him.”
“See how he crushes our men, twenty per footfall? He is not even aware that he is killing so many. I doubt that he is aware that he is killing anyone at all.”
“A simpleton?” Zhu asked.
“Ignorance is always dangerous,” Li said. “If he continues on this trajectory, he will reach the city walls, and step over them as though they were a fence built out of toothpicks. He will crush the farmhouses and the merchant shops until he reaches the citadel, then he’ll demolish the Forbidden City itself.”
“How can we stop him? Look how he towers above the Ba She, and they can devour elephants, whole. He must be all of fifty feet tall.”
Li winced.
“What’s wrong, Li. Is it your shoulder? Does it pain you?”
Li shook her head. A flood of luminescence appeared out of nowhere and surrounded her. The Ghostfire. Zhu batted them away for they were obscuring his vision, but they refused to leave. Had she called them? He could almost hear them. Hurry, hurry, hurry. No time to waste! “Li,” he shouted. “Where are you?” Just as suddenly the phenomenon vanished. “Li?”
“Zhu, I’m all right. But I must go.”
“Go? Go where? You’ve only just arrived and I need you to help me with this giant. What did you say his name was? Kua Fu?”
“You don’t need me,” Li insisted. “But Master Yun does. I didn’t summon the Ghostfire. He did. Our grandfather is in trouble. I must go to him. You must slay the giant yourself. Better yet, constrain him. Likely, he means no harm. I doubt he knows what harm he does.”
“Then I can reason with him?”
“I don’t know, Zhu. I have never met him before. I am not learned in the ways of giants. I go now.”
%%%
Li borrowed Master Yun’s horse, the mount that Zhu had taken to the capital because of the beast’s preternatural speed. Xingbar obeyed his new mistress as though he knew she carried the blood of his master. When she arrived at the mound she was horrified to learn the direction the battle had taken. The Inner Circle with its eight regiments of demons and villainous beasts were intact. And scattered around the artifice were the corpses of Ming warriors. The young emperor and Peng were under the guardianship of Fenghuang and a ghost warrior, whom she recognized as Yongfang from his unnatural height and diaphanous appearance. Fucanlong, the blue dragon, wheeled high above Dahlia’s Magic Circle.
“What has happened?” Li demanded. “Where’s Master Yun?”
“You must be Lotus Lily,” the ghost soldier said.
“I am she, but I prefer the name of Li.”
Yongfang bowed. “Fucanlong has dropped your grandfather into the Fox Queen’s heinous device. I fear he is trapped or dead. We have heard nothing from him in days. The blue dragon c
ircles above, but when he attempts a rescue, the Quilan attack him. He can’t get near enough to discover the health of the warlock.”
“Let me see for myself. Stay here with the children.”
The ghost soldier raised his dagger. “Not that way. No path leads through the demon fighters. Do you think we haven’t tried? Why do you think Master Yun chose an aerial route? Those men didn’t drop dead of boredom.”
“But I must reach him.”
“Ploughing headlong into the Circle will only get you killed. I’ve been thinking as the blue dragon has been circling. Dropping you by the same route as Master Yun can only place you in the same predicament—because she’ll see you coming. A more hidden path to reach him must exist.”
“Ma-ma,” the young emperor boy said, coming up to her and bowing. “We must do something. If I am emperor, then I must do something.”
Li looked down at the boy whose name was Wu. Why did he keep calling her Ma-ma? No time to figure that one out. She must help him become the fearless leader he was meant to be. “There is nothing for you to do yet, Majesty. Stay with Peng and the phoenix. Yongfang will watch over you.”
“But what will you do? You can’t move forward without a plan.”
“Something will come to me,” she said.
“What?”
“Your Highness,” she said, bowing with respect. “In the days to come you will become a great leader and a wise ruler. The answers are not always transparent. Sometimes, only in the hour of greatest desperation, does the road become clear.”
Wu stared at her with bright, excited eyes. “My father said I must trust you, no matter how strange you sound to me.”
“Then trust me, my young liege. By sky, river or earth, somehow I will save Master Yun and destroy the Fox Queen.” She turned to Yongfang and ordered him to bring her any maps of the terrain that Quan and Master Yun had charted. She studied these trying to find a solution to the impregnable puzzle forced upon her by Dahlia. “What are these markings?” she asked the ghost soldier. They were rings similar to the ring that marked the location of First Emperor’s tomb—the very mound they stood upon now, only much smaller.
“Those are burials of the ancient dead.”
“Like First Emperor?”
Yongfang nodded.
“And are the inhabitants of these tombs alive like yourself?” If ‘alive’ was what you could call him, she thought.
He shrugged, and his nebulous shoulders wavered. “I do not know. I don’t pretend to know how I stand outside this mound myself.”
“But if they are,” she continued, “do you know whose allegiance they represent?”
Eight small rings surrounded Dahlia’s Circle. Within her Circle was another ring. First Emperor’s mound was a large ring schematised to the south of these. Li looked across the plain where they domed as shallow hillocks. “Who lies in that ring beneath the Fox Queen’s Circle?”
“No one important,” Yongfang said. “Only a noblewoman. Her name was Lady Dai.”
“Then why did Dahlia choose that tomb on which to focus her Circle?”
“Perhaps the lady was one of her consorts, one of her worshippers? During the turbulent days of the warring states fox faeries were revered.”
“Do you think she’ll help us?”
“Even if she would, we cannot reach her.”
Li stared at the floor of the plateau, which was really the roof of First Emperor’s tomb. “Can we get inside?”
“I can take you inside as I am free to come and go as I please. The fifth rib of Dilong has released me. But what good will it do you to enter the tomb?” He paused for a moment, before a grimace ruffled his filmy face. “I see where your thoughts run. The dragon’s rib is inside the mound where the fox faerie dropped it. It’s the key to the tomb, but it will only open the gate from the exterior. What do you propose to do once you’re inside? I can help you, but only if I accompany you, and then who will protect the children?”
“We don’t need protection,” Wu said. “You must try it. Attack from underground. Catch the Fox Queen and her armies off-guard. It’s a good plan.”
Li smiled. A good plan, but only if she could burrow through the earth. “The Emperor has spoken,” she said. “Do I have a companion, Ghost Soldier? Answer swiftly.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
The Fifty-Foot Giant
Kua Fu was a giant of enormous proportions. His gargantuan feet slapped down on the battlefield, crushing tree, stone and flesh. All the time his eyes lifted to the sky and his fingers, thick as tree trunks, snapped in the air. The Imperial Army’s only reprieve was nightfall, when the great wheel of the sun sank into the horizon. Then and only then, did the giant cease his destruction. Zi Shicheng who stood at the wall beside He Zhu scowled. “What is it doing? Every weapon we use against it, it swats away like they were fleas.”
“Our armies are not what has his attention,” Zhu said, and proceeded to reiterate Li’s knowledge of Kua Fu. He was not a particularly bright giant, and thought the lights of heaven were within his reach. Perplexed by the sun’s absence at night, during the day he chased it. Alas, his leaping and chasing served no purpose, and all he managed to accomplish was a mountain of dust. The desert sands were of his making—he had drained the lakes and rivers to quench his thirst. The southern jungles—once the wooden club he carried before he dropped it from sheer exhaustion—soon took root to bloom into the mangrove trees of the coast.
“I wonder: what would he do if he caught the sun?” He Zhu asked hypothetically.
“He can’t catch it,” Zi Shicheng replied. “Anyone who believes the sun is his to catch, thinks too much of himself. Only the gods can touch it, and they don’t dare.”
“That is his weakness. He thinks too highly of himself. Either that or he is too stupid to know better. And so, we shall give him his desire. We will fashion him an orb so brilliant and beautiful he won’t know the difference. We will make it out of brass. Send orders to collect those shields that are scattered all over the field. And bring me oil, lots of it. Today we build the sun!”
He Zhu set his men to polishing the brass until the lustre hurt his eyes.
Fifteen hundred shields lay buffed and gleaming, fixed into a massive shining ball. Now what? How did they suspend it in the sky so that the behemoth might catch it and go away? He Zhu had not thought this far. He was hoping the colossal simpleton would assume the sun had fallen from the heavens, pick up the enormous, shiny ball and then leave. But the cold, late autumn sun—the true celestial orb—shone on the city, perchance to laugh. And now, the giant was getting too close to the city walls, its eyes focused above, and the shining brass ball ignored.
Out on the battlefield Liao Dong and Captain Ching massacred what remained of the White Bone Spirits and the Ba She, when the sky suddenly blackened. The remaining demons reared their heads, as though they just realized they had been duped into eating each other.
“NO, don’t let them escape,” Zhu cried. “Go after them.”
Zhu was about to make chase when the deep shadow over the city flapped its wings, and he looked up to see the underbelly of an enormous, scaled creature sail over his head to the battlefield. His jaw dropped, and Zi Shicheng went speechless. It could be nothing but a dragon. With the head of a horned lizard and the body of a finned, six-legged serpent, it dived toward their brass sun, gripped it with its bright yellow claws and hoisted it from the ground into the heavens. At the same instant a cloud covered the true sun, allowing a loose ray to strike the gleam of metal, catching Kua Fu’s eye, and the giant turned, as did the dragon, in the direction of the Grand Canal and ultimately the sea.
“Who are you?” Zhu shouted to the snapping, red dragon tail as it fishtailed up to heaven.
“I am Tianlong of the sun.”
%%%
It was an airless, vacuum-like rush that sent Li to the bottom of First Emperor’s tomb.
She looked up just in time to see the ceiling clamp shut. Darkness sett
led, and along with it the feeling of utter despair. The choice was made and she could not unmake it. All that was left to her was to move forward. Yongfang’s nebulous form appeared beside her, and in the gloom of blue light that radiated from the vault he shed a pale luminescence of his own. Li had the bamboo scroll with the map of the rings, and showed the geography of the plain. The tomb where Lady Dai was buried lay directly beneath the center of the Fox Queen’s Magic Circle. According to this map, it was due north.
“The passages lead some distance under ground,” Yongfang said. “After that some sort of key is necessary.”
“And if we can’t find the key?” Li asked, re-rolling the scroll and stuffing it into her sash.
“Then I can leave whenever I wish, but you will be stuck down here for eternity.”
“Surely you could find someone topside to dig me out?”
“Do you know how deep this tomb runs? Digging by mere mortals could take years.”
“Then we must find the key to open Lady Dai’s tomb. I only hope that the fifth rib of Dilong will serve the same purpose. How do you know Jasmine dropped it here, Yongfang?”
“Because when I left the mound the day she released the Night Guards Army, I saw her dispose of the key just before the gate shut. She wished to ensure Master Yun’s entrapment by locking it inside with him, but what she did not bargain on was the shapeshifting blue dragon saving him. As you recall, the key opens from the outside of the mound, not the inside. And this concerns me. How will you open the crypt of Lady Dai when we are already beneath the ground?”
“We may be below the ground, but we are still outside her tomb,” Li said. “My senses tell me that the logic of the dragon’s magic works this way.”
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